Reviews

Brutal ending to a great series. I found raul to be incredibly annoying and boring. Very unconvincing love story for a book who tries to argue that love is a universal energy force was quite disappointing. Tons of unnecessary info/characters that just muddled up the plot and took time away from good characters like de soya. I always hate the fake-out death and although this technically doesnt count as a real fake out in practice it 100% is and ruins a lot of the ending scene. The shrike is reduced from the cool mythical being of the first books to an ex machina anytime the plot needs it. My list of frustrations could go on for a while. I’ll give it a 2.5 since there were some interesting themes/characters/scenes sprinkled amongst the mix but my god are they few and far between in this book. Also they did my boy A. Bettik a disservice in this book.

christopherc's review against another edition

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1.0

THE RISE OF ENDYMION is the fourth and final volume of Dan Simmons' Hyperion saga and the conclusion of the storyline begun in ENDYMION. I only plodded through that book because I wanted to reach the end, and with THE RISE OF ENDYMION even that motivation almost dried up.

The problems are legion. The book is overlong, with huge sections that just serve no legitimate purpose, such as Raul's time in the Temple Hanging in Air. Simmons' extends his work as much as he can to give it an "epic" feel, but it ends up seeming boring and goofy.

Raul's love for Aenea continues to border on pedophilia for the first few hundred pages of the work, and then it graduates to simple obsession, if only because she's grown up. This whole piece of the story, which is in fact a huge chunk of the story, is utterly unconvincing. If Aenea is the messiah, one would think Raul would have better things to do than get jealous over her past and feel all squishy inside whenever she's around.

The resolution of the conflict is given a few scant pages, probably because Simmons spent too much time on high-faultin' philosophy and Raul's sexual tension. The book's structure is simply awful. Plus, Simmons causes the reader to have wasted reading the first two books in the series by dismissing the words of Ummon in THE FALL OF HYPERION as "a lie."

Argh. This book is simply awful. I'd recommend the first two books in the Hyperion saga, but stay well away from ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION.